As Michigan clawed back from the ravages of the Great Recession, in no small part due to the President Obama administration’s 2009 bailout of Chrysler and General Motors, other elected officials grabbed the credit.
Former Gov. Rick Snyder regularly touted Michigan as “the comeback state,” citing his deft management of the state budget, business tax cuts and elimination of job-killing regulations.
President Donald Trump often said the longest economic expansion in the nation’s history was almost entirely due to him. Never mind that the recovery started shortly after Barack Obama took office and slowed under Trump.
But it took only a few weeks for the deadly, insidious COVID-19 virus to collapse what the president has called “the greatest economy in the history of America.”
The hardest hit in this unprecedented crisis have been low-wage workers in food service, retail and other service businesses, most of whom who can’t work from home and get a paycheck.